


curs in the weeds

by lovages



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Demon Dean Winchester, M/M, Spoilers, post-season 9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:24:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1667960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovages/pseuds/lovages
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a twelve hour drive from Muncie to Lebanon. Castiel reminisces and mourns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	curs in the weeds

Castiel drives. This is what he knows: Angels are energy. Wavelengths. Intent. _Dust_ , in Pullman’s world. The highest forms of being.

They didn’t halve and quarter themselves in self-examination. As he drives, Castiel supposes he’s an ‘angel’ on a technicality, only by the most generous of definitions. Inside, unlike any angel, he hurts as only a human would. It’s the only thing that feels real. It’s a pain so terrible, yet so intangible. He feels quartered and drawn, as the humans say. He is numb with grief. He never knew it could feel like this. Never knew that numbness itself was a feeling. The agony can be a gaping hole, identifiable only by the sinkhole sensitivity around the very frayed edges of the wound.

The husk-gold fields strip away under the wheels of Castiel’s car and he leaves them behind. He drives away from God’s green earth for one last sight of green eyes. Sightless, dead green eyes. Eyes Castiel first set sight on in hell. Eyes that bled and wept, that implored and rebuked, that said a million things and nothing at all.

  
  
  


Muncie is a twelve hour drive away from Lebanon. Castiel has to stop around the two-hour mark at a gas station. He pays with cash and buys a coffee. Night falls and he drives through it. And for the first time in a long time, he thinks of God. Angels would turn to God for guidance. So perhaps, even if Castiel was closer to a facsimile of one, he should try as well.

Castiel had never spoken to God. He had never seen Him. Now that Castiel tries to think of it – why did he believe? Was it because, even as an angel who couldn’t feel, Castiel could imagine a creature so great as God? He remembers begging for a sign into the silent ether. As Dean had with his father, Castiel calls, and the phone rings, but no one answers. Castiel leaves voicemails with no idea if anyone is ever going to hear them. So he sits here at the wheel, listening to the dial tone. If God would answer the phone this one time, Castiel would ask Him to spare one man. Only once. One more time. Call off the dogs. One last time.

Castiel daydreams of a far-fetched future, where he asks of God, “Where had you gone?”

And in this fever-dream God will ask of Castiel in return, “Where had _you_ been, son?”

(in hell, on earth, in heaven, on earth, above the clouds and beneath the deepest oceans, searching, searching, searching and no matter how hard he looked, Castiel only ever found the truth in one man–)

The closest Castiel can come to the feeling is the memory of Dean’s face, lit by the glow of the burning ring of holy oil. Dean, red and gold and betrayed and let down and hoping against hope, asking, “Where were you?”

Maybe Castiel pulls over in the service lane at the border of Kansas and cries. He can’t remember if he sobbed or simply held himself because it was late afternoon and all around the fields shimmered green. How was the world still so beautiful? How did it still turn? What does it matter? Why is Castiel here? Dean isn’t in Kansas anymore.

Where was Castiel when Dean died?

  
  
  


Look at him, they would say about Castiel. Maybe that’s how the story would be told. God, the angels knew, struck Lucifer down for loathing humanity. And Castiel, too, was one of God’s sons. A brother to the angels. The rebel. The leader. The lover of things.

Where had he gone? Castiel had gone to hell, too. Oh, and he went willingly. He went to hell and he never truly came back. For Castiel made a fatal mistake: he touched the bare soul of a man corrupted and tortured and broken.

The humans, they are lesser. Imperfect. They feel so much. They live in pain. They beg and they die. They crawl on their bellies. They are mere curs, going through life, rabid and senseless. They burn God’s gift to them and in its place raise weeds.

And Castiel. He had brothers and sisters in Heaven and he turned on them all because of one man. He was God once and he did it all for one man. He had an army of angels once and he gave it all up for one man. He doesn’t simply love. He falls. He is the darkest seed. The abomination. He’s _in_ love. He crawls with the curs in the weeds.

  
  
  


At the bunker, Castiel waits by the door. The last time he walked through it, he was driven to it and then followed into its safety by Dean. Castiel understood then what the bunker was. It was a home to those who grew up with no house. And now it was a grave.

“This one is on me,” Sam says, as they sit at the table that witnessed many a frenzied shred of research, every other altercation, every rare moment of solidarity, every wondrous instance of– love. It was love. Quiet and unassuming and real.

“How many times have we raced to make a deal with a demon? How many times have we learnt that it comes with consequences, but,” Sam’s voice cracks, “Every time. This time was different. I told him I wouldn’t – he died wanting to be saved, Cas. Believing I wouldn’t try to save him. And now...”

Is this, Castiel wonders absently, what it means to feel dead inside? What a unique turn of phrase. To feel dead. As if death was an emotion. Quite the paradox, too. As if it was possible to know what death would feel like while still being alive. He understands it now, though. It feels like nothing. Like nothing matters anymore.

Sam looks at Castiel with so much pain in his eyes and says, “I’ve done something terrible, Cas. Worse than letting an angel possess him. Worse than tricking him. He knew what he was turning into. What the Mark was doing to him. And he didn’t want it.”

No.

Castiel shakes his head. “No. Cain was already a demon. The Mark wasn’t–”

“Cas, he’s in the basement, stuck in a devil’s trap, strapped to a chair in chains.” Sam shuts his eyes and they’re rimmed red and swollen. The words stick visibly in his throat, but he gets them out. “And his eyes. They’re black.”

  
  
  


When Castiel led his garrison into the fiery womb that bred demons, the ground quaked and burst open. Flames licked up the black walls as they split and tore. Souls fell away into the yawning maw of the pit. A crescendo of screams. The most horrific scenes of torture. This was the ungodliest place. The antithesis of creation.

Castiel was the one charged with finding the Righteous Man and so he was the one who found the Righteous Man. Dean Winchester, his face like hell, little more than the blood that once ran through his veins. All that was left of him was a blackened miasma, the rot of hell that took over his core. All that fear, all that pain, all that anger, all that shame.

Castiel shone a blinding white as he reached out and even as he did, Dean had understood.

“Don’t,” he begged. “Don’t take me out of here. You don’t know what I’ve done.”

Of course Castiel knew. He could see the destruction Dean had wreaked laid out all around them. The lashes still hung from Dean’s bloody hands. And Castiel had been foolish to believe that words that were a herald from heaven, bellowed with all the confidence of an angel of the Lord, would offer comfort: _You are saved, Dean Winchester_.

“No. This is it for me. This is what’s real. Whatever else happens, this is where I end up. The only thing worse than an eternity in here is getting out only to be thrown back in.” Dean didn’t weep. Didn’t beg again. He said it with bitterness and conviction. It was the truth to him.

Castiel didn’t understand. Why couldn’t Dean Winchester believe?

And then Castiel had touched him, to soothe, to heal, to prove– and of all things, Dean’s soul reacted like a star going supernova, bursting outward from the blackened husk that concealed it, responding with a touch of its own: tenterhooks that sank into Castiel’s grace and held fast. The blast fused Castiel’s touch on Dean as well, a mark Castiel left when he remade Dean’s flesh.

Dean Winchester wouldn’t remember this, no. Not in his mind or in his flesh and bones. His soul, however, wherever it went, no matter how well-concealed it was, remembered. Every so often, it would pull when Dean prayed, as the magnet draws the needle north. Come back, it called in tandem with Dean’s voice, an atomic thrum that demanded a response. Come home.

  
  
  


“Dean, how are you?” Castiel asks, when he steps into the basement.

“Wow, your face. It’s terrifying. You’re really rockin’ that celestial monolith look. Sorta gives that whole ‘warriors of God’ thing a lot more credibility,” Dean says, blinking rapidly, in a way that seems reptilian. He’s shackled to the table and the chain link clatters every time he moves. He studies Castiel’s face for a moment and decides, “I like it.”

Despite himself, Castiel’s lips pull up in a faint smile. “Thank you.”

Dean lowers his eyes and looks away. “What do you, uh, see?”

“You,” Castiel says. “As I always have.”

It’s the truth. Castiel has always seen Dean. He knows Dean in the most intimate of ways. He knows the precise shape of Dean’s ears. The exact bend in the cartilage of his nose. The thickness of his fingernails.

“Yeah, well, take a good look,” Dean says with a snort. “Sam’s of the opinion he’s gonna cure me. And I don’t think– I don’t know, Cas. I’m just so tired of this. Crowley’s coming for me – the chains and cuffs are to slow him down and I’m gonna go. I know I am.”

“I will end Crowley,” Castiel promises.

“You’re gonna have to shut the gates of hell to do that,” Dean says. He nods, resigned and looks down at his open palms. “With me inside.”

“No.”

“I told you this the first time. I remember now. And I know you remember I told you. This is how it ends. You can’t force him to use the blade he controls on himself.”

“No, Dean,” Castiel says forcefully. “I am not losing you.”

“Cas, you’re not listening to me.” Dean reaches the short distance the give in the chains allow him to go. Castiel places himself within arm’s reach. Dean shakes his head, and with a helpless look, turns to spread his hands on the table. “You’ll get a shot and you have to take it. You have to do it.”

Castiel searches Dean’s eyes in the shadow of the horrific mask that lurks just beneath Dean’s skin and finds the truth still there, buried deep within. The startling green that God created for his favourites– the new season fields of Kansas, the most ancient of forests, the breathtaking colour of life and rebirth . He finds the brightness of the very best of humanity, that the world tried to stamp out and erase, still exist. And the man Castiel loved, even bearing the corruption of the basest, fallen creatures, still eons better than the most loftiest of angels.

Castiel says, “No. Sam will cure you.”

“Dammit, Cas.” One of Dean’s hands is curled in a fist and he slams it against the table. “Please.”

Again, Castiel says, “No.”

Dean grits his teeth, and says, “If you ever loved me. If it was ever true, then you would do this for me.”

“What, then?” Castiel demands. “Should I lock you in hell forever? Lock myself in heaven forever? Let every human that dies be trapped in the veil forever? I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s not letting you punish yourself. I dragged you out of hell, Dean. I’m never throwing you back in there. And I won’t let you or anyone else do it.”

“I don’t want to go back, Cas,” Dean says. He sounds and looks exhausted. All the resistance diffuses out of him in an exhale. “Hell, I think I’ve paid more than my fair share. I just don’t see another option.”

“Then trust us to find a way,” Castiel says.

This time, Castiel feels the pull, just beneath his ribs. Dean’s soul, at the other end of the rope, holding on. This time, Dean takes Castiel’s hands in his and stares at where they join together and says, “Okay.”

  
  
  


Maybe the humans will tell it better. Angels are mere agents of fate. They are pure creation themselves, but they can’t create of their own volition. It is the humans that God blessed with the true miracles – the ability to create life anew. It is the humans that have the talent for storytelling.

So, yes, maybe. They’ll write of the man who became the most abhorrent creature of hell. A demon. Yet, he walked the earth with his heart of gold. And the angel who loved him so, who fell from heaven to walk beside him.

 


End file.
